


This Isn't Goodbye

by athenril_of_kirkwall (al_fletcher)



Series: Abigail Hawke [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle, F/F, Multiple Orgasms, Post-Dragon Age II, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Prompt Fic, Romance, Sex, Tumblr Prompt, angsty sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17390138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/al_fletcher/pseuds/athenril_of_kirkwall
Summary: Hawke doesn't say farewell to Merrill.





	This Isn't Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt, f!Hawke/Merrill, “This Isn’t Goodbye”.

When she comes into the shack that they call their house, Hawke is leaning over the table, poring over a note scribbled with a scrawl she recognises as Varric’s. That alone is already enough to make her halt in her tracks.

She hears her voice, but barely recognises it. “Hawke…”

Hawke slowly turns towards her, eyes heavy with emotion. She can’t find the words to say.

Merrill tries. “It’s Varric, isn’t it?”

Hawke nods her head, breath catching in her throat.

Eventually, she says, “Yes. He wrote from the Inquisition. It’s about Corypheus.”

Merrill’s heart skips a beat.

“No.”

“Yes,” Hawke says, shaking her head. “The Inquisition was attacked at Haven. They know who caused the Breach. It was him.”

“You _killed_ him, Hawke!”, Merrill exclaims. “He’s _dead!_ ”

Putting her weight on her palms, planted on the table, Hawke murmurs, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And still…”

Sighing, she seems to sink even further into the desk.

“This is _my_ mess. _My_ responsibility. The Inquisition needs me, Merrill.”

She steps forward, clutching onto Hawke, not daring to let go.

“ _I_ need you, Hawke.”

Hawke’s hands find hers, gently gripping her knuckles with her palms, callused from so many battles, so many slashes and strikes with her sword against so many opponents, and now she must go into that hell again, and maybe this time, maybe her luck’ll finally…

Breaking into her thoughts, Hawke tells Merrill, “This isn’t goodbye. I’ll come back. I always find a way back to you, Merrill. If Meredith and Orsino couldn’t tear us apart, nothing will.”

Words. Words meant to comfort her. Words that ring so hollow in their cabin. She can’t bear to address them. She changes the topic instead.

“When do you have to leave?”

“Immediately,” Hawke says.

Merrill lets her go, her big blue eyes glistening in the candlelight. “Immediately?”

Hawke blinks, turning from the desk to take Merrill in her arms again. “Not immediately.”

Their lips practically crash together as they clutch to each other, and Hawke feels the tears streaming down Merrill’s face, rolling down hers too as she breaks the kiss against her better wishes, and they press their cheeks together, staring past each other into the opposite ends of their home, eyes bleary. It’s Merrill who speaks first.

“Stay, Hawke. Stay tonight. Stay for me. _Please_ , Hawke, _please…_ ”

She breaks down, weeping into her shoulder. Hawke strokes the back of her head, gently whispering hushes into her ear. Releasing her, Hawke looks her in those brilliant blue eyes of hers, raw and red with tears. She gently wipes the newest of Merrill’s tears with her thumbs, tenderly kissing the shorter woman on her forehead.

“I’ll stay. But I need to leave first thing in the morning.”

Merrill nods mutely. She looks up, trailing kisses along Hawke’s cheek and jaw, until their lips find each other again.

“Please?”, she asks, eyes darting to the bed.

Hawke nods in return, pulling at the clasps on her gambeson, letting it slip off her shoulders into her hand, where she drops it onto the waiting side-table. Merrill’s already dealt with her coat and cloak, which form a small pile on the floor, and is undoing her smallclothes even as Hawke’s undoing her belt, which releases the top of her trousers.

Hawke bends down to loosen the puttees binding their pant-legs to her boots, and when she looks up as she undoes her laces, Merrill’s now as bare as the day she was born, minus a few lines of vallaslin on her face and…elsewhere. She leans towards Hawke, looking down at the normally taller woman.

“Hey there.”

She looks up. “Maker, you’re _beautiful_.”

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Merrill replies, nearly giggling in that girlish fashion which Hawke could’ve listened to all day in another, simpler time. But she can’t, so she smiles.

Hawke draws herself up to her full height, and the two lock eyes for what feels like an eternity, held still in time with just the lamp’s flickering in the room giving any indication of the here and now. Eventually, they kiss once more, moving to the bed. There, Hawke kisses Merrill behind her hear, down her neck, down the cleavage between her pert breasts, down her chest and lingering on her navel before she starts massaging her mound.

Merrill doesn’t know it, but Hawke has one goal tonight, and one only. She wants – she _needs_ – to give Merrill the night of her life. She wants Merrill’s last memories of her before she makes that voyage across the Waking Sea to Orlais, then up the Frostbacks to this “Skyhold” of the Inquisition’s to be nothing but bliss, and ensure that she sleeps so sound that she won’t notice Hawke leaving tomorrow.

She doesn’t get it at first, but by the time she’s come thrice and any attempt to reciprocate is rebuffed by Hawke, who even between her peaks snuggles up close, playing with her breasts, tracing circles along her ribs and making her laugh as she tickles her sides, their ankles hooked around each other as she massages those well-worn soles with the tops of her toes. The two women shuffle and writhe on the bed, maximising the contact between their flesh, as though that will keep them together for that much longer.

The sensation is so overpowering as Hawke goes down on her _yet again_ that she clamps her eyes shut, her gasps of pleasure catching in her throat and her hips bucking instinctually so hard she’s afraid she’ll slam the back of Hawke’s head on the wall or the bedstead, all the way up until the magical moment where she’s seemingly held in the air by Hawke’s mouth and hands, and her eyelids fly open, her pupils dilating wildly as a primal _peal_ of ecstasy escapes her lips. The moment is stretched out by Hawke’s expert thrusting and licking, and she rides the wave of her own orgasm as long as she’s able to, before collapsing into Hawke.

Everything is so heightened, so stimulated, that when Hawke’s hands come towards her again, she shakes her head, gently brushing them aside, and the last thing she feels is Hawke tender kissing her along her neck, gently guiding her to sleep.

When Merrill wakes up after a rest far sounder than she deserves, sunlight streaming in through the blinds, Hawke’s already left for Cumberland, with nary as much as a note. This isn’t goodbye, after all. So she said.

As Merrill gathers her clothes, she notices an amulet she thought she’d lost carefully draped over them. It’s valuable, red gems embedded in gold, and supposedly enchanted by a blood mage just like hers. Just like every gift Hawke had ever given her, it’d been scrounged up from some dusty chest somewhere – Chateau Haine in this case, or so she recalls.

She wears it under her scarf every day as she waits, continuing to shepherd elvhen refugees from Kirkwall around the Planasene Forest into Nevarra, where they might find some shelter in the Alienages there, coming home every night to an empty cabin, with that amulet, so heavy around her neck, serving as the only trace of Hawke left in it.

Days turn into weeks, those following each other until it’s more than a month since that last night, and the voice in her head whispering her worst fears becomes depressed resignation. She’s no longer surprised when a Fereldan dressed in a green headscarf and a Chantry tabard comes up to her shack bearing a scroll sealed with the Inquisition’s mark, with nothing to say except that he was sorry – as though it was his blame to burden.

Even folded up and sealed shut as the letter is, she spots Varric’s unmistakable handwriting upon it, and clutches that amulet as she tears the wax off, weeping into her scarf.

_“This isn’t goodbye.”_

It’s the only promise of hers to Merrill that Hawke’s ever broken.

**Author's Note:**

> The amulet is the Blood of Val Foret from Mark of the Assassin (https://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_of_Val_Foret), btw.
> 
> Tumblr: https://athenril-of-kirkwall.tumblr.com/post/181944124070


End file.
